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*** May Challenge - Hexcrawl ***

THE CHALLENGE

Hi guys and gals, this month's challenge is to create a regional hex map suitable for a hexcrawl style campaign. The hexcrawl mechanic was a mainstay of fantasy role playing games during the early days of the hobby but largely fell out of use by most gamers somewhere in the 90s. One of the many fruitful projects of the OSR movement has been to resurrect and breathe new life into this venerable form of game play. That said, by the admission of many within the OSR community, the typical hex map is somewhat lackluster. These maps tend to be functional rather than artistic, and while some enjoy this Spartan aesthetic the goal of this challenge is to create a more artistic hex map which ideally preserves the functionality of the hexcrawl mechanics. To that end, each entry must contain each of the following:

1) A numbering system for each of the hexes;
2) Symbols or drawings of "known" cities, towers, keeps, monster lairs, dungeons or other places of interest;*
3) A Map key (which should include a scale indicating the size of each hex);

* These should each fit within a single hex.

Other optional things which you may but need not add include: an Encounter Table, a Hex Key offering a title and/or short description of the contents of some or all of the hexes. Depending on how much interest there is, this month's challenge could lead into a followup challenge in June based on the winning entry.

Title each new thread May 2013 Entry - <your title>

Precede each WIP image with the tag ### Latest WIP ###.

The challenge will end on or around the 31st of May, and the winner will receive a golden compass, and the envy of your peers.

RESOURCES

If you are unfamiliar with the hexcrawl trope, Justin Alexander has a wonderful 10-part series of blog posts on the topic here. Looking for a way to create a hex-grid? There is a discussion at the Guild on that here.

That's an excellent blog resource for those of us who don't know the design elements and layout of gaming maps. I was just wishing for such a resource the other day, but I don't know the terminology well enough to do a proper search. Thanks Arsheesh!

And I am so tempted to join in this month, but I have to finish a few other projects first

Last year I started a game project called Teramorphers. The idea is a game that combines Civilization, Magic and other strategy game, all in a hexagonal board. I had some good ideas, but got lazy and quickly demotivated since I had no one to discuss or develop the game. Whit this thread I saw an opportunity to revive the project! The problem is, there would be pre-generated maps, but the main idea relies on 2 players Morphing the terrain so that it works with the player strategy. My idea for the contest is to simulate a game between two players, and how they could change the terrain, create buildings and manage troops. And the final map having a little more polish than the other ones, but the entire process would matter more than the final map.
So the question is, could this project fit in this particular Challenge?
Thank you guys!

Seems lot of us like it to go the Boardgame direction, which is not the same As a hexcrawl map.
Also with movable tiles of Hex in a boardgame there would be no consistent map, but his idea to create a " active running Game Session" could Be a Solution.
How would this be possible?